Today’s MarketingStudy finds ChatGPT ad clicks return a third of Google search clicks
A working paper from WU Vienna and the Frankfurt School tracked 1,898 online shops through the ChatGPT ad rollout. In US traffic, a paid ChatGPT ad visit made $0.89 in revenue, against $2.45 for a paid Google search visit. Of 87 shops that bought both, 73 recorded no paid ChatGPT sale at all. The authors put a fair ChatGPT click price near $0.26, while one known account paid $1.72.
Our take
Treat ChatGPT ads as a test budget, not a scaling channel. Cap the spend, bid well under the $3 to $5 start OpenAI suggests, and judge it on revenue per visit next to your Google search numbers. Keep earning organic ChatGPT mentions, since the same paper found organic ChatGPT visits made $3.27 each in US traffic, the best of any channel it measured.
